Leader token

The job nobody wants to keep track of

Plenty of games hand one person a job for the round: the one who reads the card out, the one who moves the group's piece, the one whose vote breaks a tie, the one who decides when the group commits. Co-operative games lean on it heavily, because a table that argues about everything never finishes anything. The job usually arrives as a small wooden thing, and the small wooden thing usually ends up under the table.

This is the same token with the arguments taken out. The name is the size of the screen, so nobody has to ask; the round counter means nobody loses count; and the tally means nobody can claim they have led fewer rounds than they have. Set it to move round the table for a game with a strict order, or to random when the point is that the job should not be predictable.

Line leaders, monitors and jobs in a classroom

The classroom version of a leader token is a job chart, and it has the same two failure modes: the chart is out of date, and somebody is certain they have been skipped. A screen at the front with one name on it fixes the first, and the tally beside each name fixes the second. Round the table is the rule to use here, because a rota that is predictable is a rota nobody has to police.

Step back is worth knowing about. A round advanced by mistake is the most common thing that happens with a tool like this, and stepping back restores both the holder and the round number rather than just moving the token the other way, so the history stays honest.

A token, not a turn order

This page tracks one role across rounds. For the single question asked at the top of a round and then forgotten, the who goes first draw is the page next door, with a hat that empties before it refills. If what you need is the order everybody plays in, dealt out as cards, that is the turn order cards. For the round and the phase within it rather than a person, the round marker is the page, and for points rather than roles the scoreboard is quicker.

The names come from the same shared list every tool here with players uses, so a roster typed into one is already in the next. It never leaves this browser and it is never put into a link.

Nothing to install, nothing to sign up for

The tool runs entirely in your browser. There is no account, nothing you make is uploaded, and nothing you type is sent anywhere or put into a link.

The page itself is not silent, though: it carries advertising code and a visit counter that sets no cookie, and the cookie page says exactly what each of those does.

This page remembers your settings in your browser under pph.leader.state, pph.leader.rule and pph.leader.muted, and nowhere else. Clearing your site data for papercarnival.com removes it.

Player names are kept under pph.players so every tool with players reads the same list. They stay in this browser and never reach a link.